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THEN HE COMPLAINED ABOUT MITT ROMNEY’S TAXES AND SCRAMBLED FROM THE PODIUM

Sen. Harry Reid challenged NV Energy at the National Clean Energy Summit on Tuesday to close the coal-burning Reid Gardner Generating Station in Moapa. The Sierra Club and the Moapa Band of Paiutes have been protesting the old plant for years, complaining about its toxic emissions and landfills full of filthy coal ash. “It’s time to close the dirty relic Reid Gardner,” he said. “Let’s turn out the lights on Reid Gardner and turn them out forever.” Protesters calling for the closure of the plant had gathered outside the Bellagio on the morning of the summit. There weren’t very many of them, but they must have gotten their message across. AMY KINGSLEY

BRUCE WAYNE WOULD APPROVE

The U.S. wind energy industry is now producing 50 gigawatts of power, thanks in part to the Spring Valley wind farm near Ely — Nevada’s first utility-scale wind project. That’s the equivalent of 44 coal-fired plants or 11 nuclear plants, according to a press release. Emissions reductions are great and all, but our favorite thing about the Spring Valley wind farm is its sensitivity to migratory bats in nearby Great Basin National Park. According to the developer, Mike Garland of Pattern Energy, the company installed sensors that track the bats’ movements. If they’re headed for the wind farm, the turbines shut off, ensuring that no bats are maimed in the name of progress. AMY KINGSLEY

SHALLOW FOCUS

In the right hands, Instagram can be a lot of fun. In the wrong hands, you get the web page This Is Las Vegas Now. Using the latest in technological gobbledegook, it pulls in a constantly changing, real-time stream of Instagram photos of Las Vegas (one of several cities covered by the service).

OK, “wrong hands” might be a tad judgmental. “Shallow”? When we checked in, at 3:38:56 on Tuesday, there were mostly tourist shots of the Strip, some pool-related images (hello, girls in orange bikinis!), hotel facades, too many pictures of food and one dork photographing himself in a hotel-room mirror (button the shirt, bro). Nothing like what we think of as “the real Las Vegas.”

Now, we could try to gin up a backlash campaign to jam the site with cool shots of downtown neon and the city’s cultural amenities, but … nah. If a page like this helps convince a few more tourists, even those with regrettably unbuttoned shirts — to say nothing of more girls in orange bikinis — then it’s probably best left alone. See for yourself at http://gqm.ag/MqGnYC. SCOTT DICKENSHEETS

A FEW WORDS ON DATING

National Geographic magazine recently scanned user profiles on dating websites for common words. They broke down their findings by state, and now that they’ve done all the hard work, we bring to you words favorited by our neighbors.